Jungian Archetypes and Oedipus the KingSophocles' play Oedipus the King presents multiple examples of collective unconscious archetypes from the theories of Carl G. Jung. In general, Jung's theories state that there are archetypes that define the world, its people, and why people participate in or commit certain activities. Jung explains that these archetypes lurk in the collective unconscious of every person's mind. The hero archetype is one of them. The central part of Oedipus Rex shows the character Oedipus as the archetypal Jungian hero and sacrificial scapegoat. To understand Jung's theory of archetypes, the reader must first understand the reasoning behind them. Carl G. Jung explains the conscious mind by dividing it into three different psyches: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The ego is simply Jung's interpretation of the conscious mind. The personal unconscious is everything that is not currently conscious, but can be. The collective unconscious is a reservoir of human experiences that is transmitted from generation to generation. It includes archetypes of the self, which are archetypes for different types of people or characters in literature (Jung 67). They can be described as things like déjà vu or love at first sight. It is the feeling that what is being felt or experienced has been felt or experienced before. Jung describes the hero as an “archetype of transformation and redemption” (Guerin 163). The character of Oedipus is a concrete example of Jung's hero archetype. Jung says that the hero archetype first goes through the "quest" to become a hero. The hero's "quest" in Jungian theory is described as a "long journey in which... middle of the paper... the final step to becoming a sacrificial scapegoat. Oedipus discovers that he is the murderer of King Laius and he will become the archetypal sacrificial scapegoat for the city of Thebes Throughout this passage of the play, Oedipus continually gathers incriminating evidence against himself from the source of his wife and mother, Jocasta's assurance that his quest from Corinth would doom his. destined to become the murderer of his biological father and the sacrificial scapegoat for the well-being of the people and land of Thebes Works Cited Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle G. Labor, Lee Morgan of Critical Approaches to Literature 2nd edition. Oxford, 1979. 162-165.Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols New York: Dell, 1968. 110-127.Sophocles, 1970. 15-21.